The Bombay High Court’s Aurangabad bench has served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India on its social-networking site orkut.com.

The order was issued on Monday in response to a public-interest petition filed by Yugant Marlapalle, an advocate in Aurangabad. Google has six weeks to respond. The petition said a community called ‘We Hate India’ — full of anti-India propaganda and with a picture of the Tricolour being burnt — has been created on Orkut. It sought the removal of the community from the site.

The ‘We Hate India’ group currently has 103 members, almost all of whom are from Pakistan. The site’s creator calls himself Miraslov Stankovic and claims he is based in Russia. His other Orkut communities include “Israel Must be Destroyed” and “I Hate Himesh Reshammiya”.

I can understand that there can be some one who hates Mr Nasal Reshammiya, but why India.

And what I cannot understand is why is Orkut being blammed for such communities.Orkut’s terms of service says it may, but shall have no obligation to, remove materials that it determines in its sole discretion are unlawful and objectionable.

Orkut has faced issues before, most notable in Brazil where a Federal Judge in Brazil named Jose Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release Orkut user’s information by September 28th. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. The information the government is requesting would be used to identify individuals that are spreading child pornography and hate speech, according to the Brazilian government. As of September 27th 2006 Google has stated that they will not release the information and will instead file a brief explaining why they refuse to release the information.

Orkut is most popular in Brazil (63%), then in the US (13.8%) and then in India (9.5%).

Orkut is banned in Iran and the UAE. Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is blocked by the government. As they say, this is due to national security issues, as orkut users have the ability to spread messages rapidly, but the government says it’s due to Islamic ethical issues about dating and match making

What would be India’s next action? Ban orkut in India. Well i am sure the indian government would not be so harsh to orkut, but i don’t trust the government either, if you remember a couple of months ago indian ISPs blocked some popular blog sites.

Well we would have to wait for the decesion! As an orkut user, i hope it to be positive.

Searchmash is a new search engine developed by Google, and wants to test it without people knowing that its a google product. Google seems to be more concerned about the user interface of its products. Searchmash is one such product in which Google has experimented with some UI techniques.

When ever you search for anything on google, you come up with ads on your left, from now you would find some ads with a Green Phone Icon. Clicking on it would make you enter your phone number and you would be receiving a call from the advertiser. I am sure this would boost the power of google’s online advertisement services.